


Hyde Awey

by the_quiet_winds



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21714742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_quiet_winds/pseuds/the_quiet_winds
Summary: “Maybe if you weren’t such a conniving little witch, none of this would have happened!”Catherine blows up. Things only get worse from there.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 86





	Hyde Awey

“Maybe if you weren’t such a conniving little witch, none of this would have happened!”  
That’s it, right there, the death sentence everyone had been waiting for.  
Boleyn recoils, physically flinching at Aragon’s harsh declaration. Her eyes narrow, her nostrils flare, her lip curls. “I am not a witch.”  
“Say that to your sixth finger, love,” Aragon growls sarcastically. She, to be completely honest, doesn’t know where this anger is coming from, Boleyn had made a simple mistake. She just couldn’t calm herself down. “It’s a shock that Henry beheaded you instead of burning you at the stake.”  
“Like your daughter did?”  
At the mention of Mary, the other queens physically retreat.   
“How dare you.” Aragon steps closer. “How dare you even speak about my daughter?! All she did was try and fix our country, because someone decided to bewitch,” she pointedly uses the word again, “my husband and caused him to fracture our country on its religious beliefs!”  
“Trying to fix the country?” Boleyn laughs. “Sorry, love, it was my daughter who brought England into its Golden Age, remember? Sending people to the New World? That was my Elizabeth. Your daughter slaughtered hundreds. You wanna talk about a witch?” Anne grins wickedly. “You’re the one who taught her everything she knows.”   
Aragon, before she can stop herself, lunges at Anne. Boleyn jumps back, just out of reach, as Cleves and Jane grab Catherine’s arms to keep her from advancing further.   
“Let me go!” She demands.  
“Not until you calm down,” Cleves says firmly. “You need to cool down.”  
“And she needs to pay for her words!”  
“Catherine,” Jane says soothingly, “we can all work this out-”  
Aragon roughly pulls her arm back and, anger pulsing through her blood like oxygen, she brings the back of her hand to connect with Jane’s cheek, sending the third queen toppling to the floor.  
“Mum!”   
Katherine rushes over to help Jane up, as does Parr, and they all look to Aragon for answers.  
But she’s gone, and the front door is still barely open.  
\---  
Four drinks deep, Aragon is still feeling horrible. But it’s a murky, indistinguishable kind of horrible, the kind where she can’t sort her fears from her pain and can’t decide if she wants to cry because she misses her daughter or if it’s because this is some of the worst wine she’d ever had.  
“Rough night?”  
Aragon looks over, and a woman is sitting next to her. Her face is blurry, her accent unrecognizable, yet she’s incredibly familiar in the weirdest sort of way. Catherine figures there’s not much more that can go wrong this evening.  
So she starts talking.  
Her own words don’t reach her ears, her throat making syllables of its own accord, and Catherine can’t keep herself from talking no matter how hard she tries.  
“Looks like you’ve been through the ringer today,” the woman concedes. “Can I buy you a shot?”  
Aragon agrees.  
Two shots appear in front of them. The woman smiles and raises her glass to Aragon. “To all the things that can go wrong in a night.”  
Without hesitation or comprehension of her companion’s words, Aragon downs the drink. It goes down in the weirdest ways, tingling a little too much in her throat and far from warm in her chest.  
She looks over and her companion has slipped off.  
It takes Catherine another three seconds to realize the drinks were definitely coming back up, and she rushes to the bathroom as quickly as possible.  
Crowded in the tiny cubicle, she hunches over the toilet and empties the contents of her stomach not once but twice. She clutches at the wall, desperate for anything to grab to to keep her head from spinning.  
She throws up once more and then things get fuzzy.  
In all honesty, Catherine isn’t entirely sure how she gets home, but somehow she does, stumbling through the door at half-past midnight as her attempts to be quiet fail miserably.   
“Let’s get you to bed, love.”  
It sounds like Jane, it has to be, the sweet voice she hears.   
She barely makes it to her bed before she passes out, a soft cadence echoing in her ears.  
“Thanks Jane,” she slurs before falling asleep.  
But Jane Seymour is tucked up in her own bed, passed out with Katherine tucked under her chin.  
\---  
Catherine wakes up the next morning with no hangover, surprisingly. She feels rejuvenated, she feels amazing, like all of the bad energy had been taken away from her.  
“Good morning queens!” She greets, grinning, as she enters the kitchen.   
Jane looks up from stirring her tea. “You’re awfully chipper this morning.”  
“Had a great night out.” She stretches. “And thanks for helping me last night.”  
“I didn’t-”  
Jane is cut off by Boleyn entering the room, immediately glaring at Aragon. “Good morning,” she says pointedly.  
Parr nearly drops her mug as Aragon swiftly crosses the room and takes both of Boleyn’s hands in hers. “Anne, I’m so sorry about yesterday. Everything I said was completely unreasonable and cruel. Do you think you can forgive me?”  
Boleyn is baffled. Such an enthusiastic and surprisingly heartfelt apology from the eldest queen was certainly something unfamiliar. “Uh, yeah, I guess,” she says.  
Aragon smiles brilliantly. “Wonderful.” She releases Anne’s hands and crosses back towards the kitchen, her grin growing brighter when she notices the wonderful array of breakfast foods Jane has put out.   
“Thank you for the breakfast, Jane,” she says brightly, kissing the woman’s cheek. She fills a plate and splits back up to her room, leaving four (Cleves, as usual, is still asleep) very confused queens behind.  
“That was… completely out of character,” Parr comments.  
“Agreed,” Anne says. She shakes her hands out a few times. “Even her touch,” she muses. “Everything felt wrong.”  
“Like she was a different person or something,” Katherine mumbles.  
“You don’t think…”  
“Henry? Never,” Parr says surely. “This would not be his strategy at all. This is something else.”  
“What, then?” Boleyn challenges.  
“I don’t know.” She sighs. “But we need to figure it out.”  
They do not, in fact, figure it out. Aragon is so bubbly and out of character that it’s hard to get a serious word out of her mouth.   
Boleyn can’t even get Aragon to seem even a smidgen like herself.   
“Cathyyyyyy,” she groans. She enters the room without knocking, which is usually enough to warrant a full stop from Aragon herself, but the queen doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest.  
“Annie!” Catherine greets. “Come in, darling. Make yourself comfortable.”  
Those words, that tone, is enough to make Anne very uncomfortable.  
“What has gotten into you?!” Boleyn finally bursts out.  
Aragon cocks her head to the side. “Nothing, I am just in such a great mood!”  
“No,” Boleyn says immediately. “I’ve seen you in a good mood, and this isn’t it at all. Who are you and what have you done with Catalina de Aragon?!”  
The sound of her Spanish name, coming from her formerly sworn rival, cuts swiftly and cleanly through Aragon’s ‘facade.’  
“You’re not allowed to call me that,” she declares sharply.   
This switch throws Boleyn for a loop she was not expecting. “Oh, does that make you mad?” Boleyn taunts, hoping she’s drawing the normal, not super-scary-cheerleader-Aragon back to the surface.  
“I am Catherine,” Aragon says. “You of all people should know that.”  
Boleyn smirks. “What are you going to do about it?” She teases again.  
But it’s not right, something isn’t right. There’s a darkness in Aragon’s eyes that Boleyn isn’t expecting, her brown eyes looking almost black.  
“I’ll do what I didn’t do last time,” she warns, stepping closer, “and I’ll make you wish you’d never stepped foot back in England.”  
Boleyn wisely ducks out of her room after that, assuming Catherine would cool down and all would be well for the show that night.  
But oh, how we dream to be destroyed.  
By the time the queens are lingering behind the curtain for the show, there’s a nervous electricity crackling in the air, intangible yet too real. Cleves, Katherine, and Jane linger in the back having a quiet conversation, while Boleyn and Parr rapidly discuss one topic, Aragon, in a swiftly whispered French. Aragon herself sits on the edge of the risers in front of Maria’s drumset, casting murderous looks at not only Boleyn but also Bessie, standing a mere foot away.   
“Places, ladies! Places for the top of the show.”  
Aragon swears loudly in Spanish and stands up. Maria barely is able to swat at her shoulder with her drumstick.  
“Cállate, Catalina!” Maria whisper-shouts.  
The intro starts, Greensleeves echoing slowly and melodically through the theater, before giving way to a low static hum as Aragon prepares her first line.  
“Divorced!”  
No one lets it show, but that single word is spoken higher than any of them had ever heard out of Aragon’s mouth before.   
She’s smiling insanely brightly. “And tonight, London, we are…”  
There’s a long, long pause, as usual.  
The show goes as normally as it possibly could, although it’s not hard to see that Aragon is bouncier and more excited than usual - even her quips lack their usual bite.  
It’s an odd show. The audience, those who hadn’t seen the show a hundred times, at least, probably didn’t think anything was wrong, but the queens could sense there was most definitely something about Aragon that was amiss.   
Stagedooring, though, proves this thought even further.   
Almost every night all the queens left through the stage door to meet fans waiting for them. They’d sign programs, take pictures, and even receive gifts from fans. It was a great way, for the most part, to wash away the stress of a show and reassure themselves they were doing a good job.  
One fan approaches Aragon trepidatiously, fingers fiddling with the program’s spine as she waited her turn. Aragon gives her a broad grin and invites her closer.  
“I thought you were amazing,” the girl says quietly as Catherine signs her program. “You were always my favorite to learn about in school,” she adds. Aragon chuckles softly to herself, and the girl’s confidence grows just a smidge. “Something about the great Catalina de Aragon and her fight to the English throne-”  
But she doesn’t get to finish her statement, because in barely three seconds, Aragon has dropped her program and marker to the floor and retreated back through the stagedoor.  
The girl shakily picks up the discarded items and struggles to hide her tears as she makes her way to the next queen in sight, Anna.  
“Hey babes,” Anna greets casually. She cocks her head slightly to the side at the sight of tears. “What’s got you down?” She takes the items from her hands and signs the program.   
The girl doesn’t answer.  
Anna gently nudges her with her elbow. “What is it, kiddo?”  
“It was Aragon,” she mumbles out, shifting her jacket around her sides. “She was really nice to me at first, and then she just… walked off.” Her voice tapers off to a barely-there whisper.  
Cleves raises an eyebrow, then looks around to the other queens. There are almost no fans left in the room, so Anna wraps a gentle arm around the girl and leads her towards Boleyn and Jane.  
“Hello, love,” Jane says softly. “What do we have here?”  
“Go on,” Anna encourages, “tell them what you told me?”  
The girl shakily repeats her story, not leaving out a single detail and barely noticing as Parr and Katherine move closer.  
“It’s like earlier,” Anne muses. The others looked at her, confused, so she goes on. “I was talking to Cathy when she was in that great mood earlier, and all of the sudden her mood changed, almost exactly like that.”  
“Maria did it too, but the other way around, I think,” Jane adds. “Right before the show.”  
Boleyn snaps her fingers. “I know what we have to do.”  
After making sure the fan was alright, Boleyn leads the march backstage to their shared dressing room, catching Aragon just as she was about to leave.  
“Not so fast,” she calls.   
Aragon freezes in place. She turns slowly.  
“I’m going back to the house.”  
“Like hell you are,” Boleyn says.   
“Well who is gonna stop me?” Aragon snarls. “Maybe you’d like to lose your head again?”  
Anne can hear Katherine give a slight, tiny whimper behind her but she doesn’t back down. “My head is staying pretty firmly attached to my shoulders, thank you very much.”  
“Catherine,” Jane interrupts, “this isn’t you. Something is happening-”  
“Yeah, you all are fucking annoying,” Aragon says as if its the most obvious thing in the world. She juts her chin in Jane’s direction. “And you,” she marches forward, absolutely effortlessly pushing Boleyn out of the way to get to Jane.   
That, for one thing, is new. It isn’t a surprise that Aragon is strong, it’s something that all the queens knew rather well. But she shoves Boleyn aside as if she were the tiniest pebble next to Aragon’s boots.   
Did Aragon get taller as well?  
Catherine jabs a finger into Jane’s chest. “You’re the one who stole my daughter from me,” Aragon hisses. She forces Jane backwards with such ease it almost seems like they’re gliding on ice. The queens part like the sea until Jane’s back hits the wall, Aragon absolutely towering over her. “You took her from me and now you’re going to pay.”  
“Oi!”  
Aragon turns, staring down the owner of the voice. Boleyn.  
“You again,” she groans. “What do you want now, you pestering little witch?”  
Boleyn’s confidence falls a smidge. But she carries on. “I have something to say.”  
Aragon rolls her eyes. “Well? Go out with it, you stupid woman.”  
“Catalina.”  
The change is so instantaneous and bloody obvious they all feel stupid. Aragon crumbles back into herself, seeming smaller by the moment. She shakes her head, once, twice, then looks to the terrified Jane.  
“Oh my God,” she breaths. “What happened?”  
Cleves steps forward, just slightly. “Catherine?”  
There’s no change.  
Cleves swallows. “Catalina?”  
There it is again, Aragon building herself back up until she basically towers over all of them - Boleyn and Cleves included.   
“What is happening?” Katherine squeaks.  
Parr sucks in a deep breath, swallowing her anxiety at doing exactly the thing she’s about to do. “Catalina, Catalina, Catalina.”  
Aragon’s eyes blow wide and she sinks to the floor, hands grabbing at her head as she tries to regain any semblance of control.  
“Help,” she barely whimpers out. “Voices… too many voices… all at once-”  
Jane hushes her gently. They all kneel around her, creating a protective circle as if it could ward off whatever ails her.  
“Come on, now,” Cleves whispers, “we’re going to figure this out. Together.”  
“Too many voices,” Catherine cries softly. “I can’t-”  
“Catalina…”  
A singsong voice drifts down the hallway.  
“M-mother?”  
“Catalina…”  
“No,” Catherine whimpers, “no, please-”  
“Catalina…”  
It’s too late, and the spell takes effect again. And this time, they landed on the wrong side of Aragon’s coin.   
She glares intensely at all the women around her, and with a strength no one knew she possessed, forces them all back.   
The blow is strong enough to knock Jane to the ground, Katherine rushing over to help, and Aragon advances on Parr, Boleyn, and Cleves.  
“Come on, Catherine,” Cleves pleads, retreating slowly towards the emergency door. “you’re stronger than this. If anyone can beat this, it’s you.”  
“Well it certainly wouldn’t be you, Miss I-Never-Had-A-Problem-In-My-Life.”  
Good to know Aragon kept her wit thought all of this.  
Jane looks helplessly down the hall to where Anna, Anne, and Parr were helplessly trying to fend off Aragon, but there’s someone else moving towards them, stepping over Jane’s legs like she barely exists, the train of a long dress trailing behind her.  
“Who are you?!” Jane demands, feeling much stronger than she knows she looks.  
The woman stops and turns. She looks down at the two women with a pitying gaze and a sadistic grin. “You should really know who I am, Jane,” she murmurs condescendingly.  
She sweeps off.  
“Aragon!” Boleyn cries out. “You have to beat this, whatever it is!”  
Catherine doesn’t respond, except with a growl and a shove on Cleves, pushing the woman into a nearby room. She continues to press on Boleyn and Parr.  
“Why are you doing this?” Parr whispers.  
“Because it’s what she wanted.”  
They barely have time to contemplate the voice before their backs hit the emergency door, Catherine of Aragon towering over them.  
“Catalina, talón!”  
She stops dead in her tracks like an obedient dog.  
It’s then that Parr and Boleyn notice the presence of another woman behind Catherine, dressed in royal gowns and approaching them at a slow, menacing pace.  
“What do you want with her?” Parr demands, voice nearly shaking as much as her legs. She looks to her godmother, so vacant yet so feral.  
“Oh, darling Catherine,” the woman croons to Parr, “I’m glad we have finally met.”  
“Whatever you’re doing,” Boleyn warns, “it can’t continue. Let Aragon go.”  
The woman laughs and sets an affectionate hand on Aragon’s shoulder. “But it’s what she wanted.”  
“Stop with the riddles! What have you done with her?” Boleyn cries.  
“Well that’s not important, is it?” The woman grins. “All that matters is I have my Catalina back.”  
Parr steps closer and takes one of Catalina’s hands. “Come back to us, please.”  
The woman pulls Catalina out of reach. “She’s nothing to any of you. Not any more.”  
In her rage, which she didn’t even realize she had at first, Parr reaches to slap the woman across the face.  
Catalina, even in her passive state, effortlessly shoves Parr into the same room as Cleves, leaving only Boleyn.  
“I’ll ask you one more time,” Boleyn growls. “What have you done with her?!”  
“And I gave you an answer, I did what she wanted from me.”  
“This,” Boleyn gestures to Catalina, “is what she wanted?”  
“Practically begged for it, darling.”  
“Being controlled and emotionally unstable?” Boleyn laughs. “Doubtful.”  
“Not emotionally unstable,” the woman corrects, “freed.”  
“What the hell did you do?”  
“She was so upset,” the woman says with a false pout, “that she couldn’t control her anger, she wished there was a way she could just take it all out. So I did one better, I made her two different people. And soon,” she checks the clock on the wall, “the spell will be permanent.”  
“Then undo it,” Boleyn says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  
“Now why would I do that, when I have my daughter right where I want her?”  
“Your daughter?” Realization paints Boleyn’s face white. “You’re-”  
“Isabella of Spain, precisely. And this,” she gestures to the obedient, barely-contained Catalina, “is the girl I raised. The girl I fought to put on the English throne that you all have corrupted.”  
“We’ve done nothing,” Boleyn spits, “of the sort. She’s one of us. Family.”  
There’s the barest glint of recognition in Catalina’s eyes. “Family,” she mumbles, as if in sleep.  
“That’s right,” Boleyn encourages. “Family.”  
Thought begins to flicker through Catalina’s face. “Family,” she repeats, slightly more sure.  
“No,” Isabella interrupts, tightening her grip on Catalina, “not family. They all mean nothing to you.” She points to Boleyn. “She stole your husband. She had you exiled.”  
“And Jane basically had me killed,” Boleyn states. “Old news. We’re different now.” She sees Jane past Isabella’s shoulder and gives a tiny smile. “Family. We’ve forgiven each other.”  
“Family,” Catalina says again. Her voice is stronger now. “Yes, family.” Richness floods back into her eyes. “Family. They’re my family.” She shoves Isabella away from her. “You don’t get anything from me,” she declares, that familiar fire in her words. “You never even responded to my letters when I was locked up in England for seven years.”  
“Catalina, I-”  
“My name is Catherine,” Aragon declares proudly. She steps away to open the door of the room Parr and Cleves were in. “And these women right here?” Catherine presses her mother back against the wall. “They’re my real family.”  
“Catalina-”  
“Goodbye, mother.”  
As if she were never there, Isabella fades into the wall and disappears.  
Catherine takes a massive inhale and falls to her knees. The others rush around her: Boleyn landing in front of her, Parr and Cleves on her right, Katherine on her left, and Jane behind her, gently bracing both of her shoulders for support.  
“You’re alright,” a voice whispers. Cleves? Cleves. “It’s okay now.”  
Boleyn takes both of her hands. “We’re here for you.”  
“We’ve got you, love,” Jane murmurs behind her.  
Aragon starts to cry - not loud messy sobs, just silent tears streaming down her face. She feels so utterly weak, so drained. Whatever spell her mother had used on her had taken its toll.  
“Let’s get you home, Cathy,” Boleyn says. She grins when Aragon gives her the tiniest mad face, which is completely derailed by the tears on her cheeks.  
“Home,” Catherine repeats in an empty echo.   
“Home,” Parr says, “with your family.” She presses a soft kiss to her godmother’s temple.   
“I’m sorry,” Aragon all but whimpers, “for all of this. I was drunk, and-”  
“It’s alright,” Cleves cuts in softly. “It wasn’t your fault.”  
Catherine looks up at Boleyn. “Anne,” she squeezes her hands very gently. “I’m sorry about what I said to you when we were fighting. I didn’t mean any of it-”  
“I know, Cath-”  
“Please,” Aragon interjects softly, “let me finish.”  
Boleyn nods. “Go on, then.”  
“You’re not a witch,” she says, “I promise you you’re not. Farthest thing from it. I shouldn’t have said it.”  
“And I shouldn’t have said what I did about Mary,” Boleyn says, and she sees Aragon flinch at the mention of her daughter again. “But it’s over now. Can we move on?”  
Aragon smiles and tugs on Boleyn’s hands, pulling the other woman into a hug.   
“I think we can,” she says, then smirks softly. “Annie.”  
Boleyn protests the nickname and tries to pull away, but Aragon just laughs and holds her tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> Finally decided to post some stuff on here.  
> Go to tumblr for more - @the-quiet-winds


End file.
